^2005 Coalition government in Germany
After the federal elections of 2005,
in which neither the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with its ally
the Christian Social Union (CSU), nor the Social Democratic Party
of Germany (SPD) won a decisive victory, their negotiations succeed
in the swearing in of a coalition government led, as chancellor, by
Angela
Dorothea Merkel [née Kasner, 17 Jul 1954~] of the CDU.
--
Her cabinet consists of:

2002 Following Brocade Communications' previous evening's
warning that it will miss first quarter 2003 earning estimates by a wide
margin, and that its CEO will resign at the end of that quarter, its stock
(BRCD) is downgraded by Lehman Brothers from Equal-weight to Underweight,
by Robert W. Baird from Neutral to Underperform, by Bear Stearns from Peer
Perform to Underperform, by RBC Capital Markets from Sector Perform to Underperform,
by Salomon Smith Barney from Outperform to Underperform, by CE Unterberg
Towbin from (Short and Long Term) Perform to Avoid, by AG Edwards from Buy
to Hold, by First Albany from Buy to Neutral, by Soundview Technology from
Outperform to Neutral, by Punk Ziegel from Accumulate to Market Perform.
On the NASDAQ, 98 million of the 234 million BRCD shares are traded, dropping
from their previous close of $7.28 to an intraday low of $5.20 and closing
at $5.28. They had traded as high as $41.37 as recently as 09 January 2002
and $133.31 on 23 October 2000. Brocade is a supplier of open Fibre Channel
Fabric solutions that provide the intelligent backbone for Storage Area
Networks.2000 Valentin Paniagua became Peru's interim
president, following the resignation of disgraced Alberto Fujimori. 1998 Extremistas musulmanes indonesios atacan varias iglesias
católicas y realizan linchamientos sobre indonesios católicos,
a los que acusan de haberse enriquecido durante el régimen dictatorial
de Suharto. . 1997 New Zealanders
Robert Hamill and Phil Stubbs arrive in Barbados from the Canary Islands
in their boat, Kiwi Challenger, after 41 days, one hour and 55 minutes —
a new record for rowing across the Atlantic. 1996
Washington announced a review of airbag safety following reports of deaths
caused by air bags during deployment.

^1996 AOL agrees to provide pricing screen
America Online agrees to provide a
pop-up screen asking members to select a pricing plan. The company
had planned simply to switch over to a flat fee of $19.95 for unlimited
access as of December 1, 1996. However, several states filed complaints
with the Justice Department, alleging that the price change represented
a rate increase that would charge customers for services they had
not requested. To settle the complaints, AOL agreed to provide the
pop-up screen, which would allow users to make their own decisions
about pricing plans.

^1996 Child murderer commits sex assault 3 years later. At age 10, Jessie Rankins was
the youngest person ever convicted of murder in the United States.
Jessie Rankins and another youth, Tony, 11, were convicted
as juveniles of the 13 October 1994 murder Eric Morse, 5, who was
dropped from a window of a Chicago Housing Authority building. Rankins
was sent to the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville, where on 22
November 1996, he sexually assaults another teenaged inmate.
Rankins would plead guilty after DuPage
prosecutors win the legal battle to have him tried as an adult for
this crime. Because he was charged as a juvenile for the murder, state
law requires that Rankins be released anytime before his 21st birthday.
But on 24 September 1999 Judge Ronald Mehling sentences Rankins, now
15, to 9 years in prison, to be held in a state facility for a minimum
of 4 1/2 years, or until he is nearly 20. In addition, Rankins could
be transferred to an adult prison when he is 17.
During a lengthy set of Juvenile Court hearings earlier in 1999, Rankins'
attorneys argued, unsuccessfully, that their client was moderately
mentally retarded and not fit for trial. Rankins said he did not commit
the assault, but admitted participation in the attack. At the sentencing,
Rankins declines to make a statement. John Elias, assistant public
defender, said that Rankins was afraid that if he did not participate
in the crime, he would have become a victim. By then Rankins is held
in the Illinois Youth Center in Joliet, where the state houses many
of its more serious juvenile offenders.

^
1990 Margaret Thatcher resigns as UK prime minister
After eleven years as the first woman
Prime Minister in British history, Margaret Thatcher, having failed
to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership on the first
ballot, announces her resignation.
Thatcher first entered British politics in 1959 when she was elected
as a Conservative MP for Finchley, an area of North London. During
the 1960s, Thatcher rose rapidly in the ranks of the Conservative
Party, and in 1967, joined the shadow cabinet sitting in opposition
to Harold Wilson's ruling Labour cabinet. With the victory of the
Conservative Party under Edward Health in 1970, Thatcher became secretary
of state for education and science. In 1974, the Labour Party returned
to power, and she served as joint shadow chancellor before replacing
Edward Health as the leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. Under
her leadership, the Conservative Party shifted further right in its
politics, called for privatization of nationalized industries and
utilities, and promised a resolute defense of Britain's interests
abroad. In 1979, Thatcher was named prime minister as the Conservatives
won a forty-four seat majority in Parliament. Her government began
a rapid program of privatization and government cutbacks, winning
acclaim from some quarters but also contributing to the most polarized
British society in decades. In 1983, despite the worst unemployment
figures for half-a-decade, Thatcher was reelected to a second term
thanks to the British victory in the Falklands War with Argentina,
and in 1987, to a third term thanks to an upswing in the economy.
In 1990, the unpopularity of her poll tax, coupled with her uncompromising
opposition to further British integration into the European Community,
led to her defeat as Conservative Party leader. Thatcher's resignation
marked the longest continuous tenure of a British prime minister in
150 years.

^1985 Microsoft licenses Apple's look and feel Microsoft signs an agreement
with Apple, allowing Microsoft to copy visual characteristics of Apple's
Macintosh in its Microsoft Windows software. Windows was heavily based
on the Macintosh user interface (which, in turn, was greatly influenced
by the Alto, designed at Xerox PARC in 1972). In 1988, Apple sued
Microsoft for copyright infringement, because Microsoft's licensing
agreement had applied only to Windows 1.0, not to subsequent versions.
The suit was dismissed in 1991.

^1985 Iacocca leads naturalization ceremony Lee Iacocca, the CEO of the
Chrysler Corporation, presided over the largest swearing-in ceremony
for new US citizens in American history. At the end of six days of
rallies around the country, Iacocca, the son of Italian immigrants
himself, lead 38'648 people in a swearing of allegiance to the United
States. Iacocca served as president of the Ford Motor Company during
the 1970s, and was largely responsible for the extremely profitable
Mustang car. After a falling
out with Henry Ford II in 1978, Iacocca moved to the struggling Chrysler
Corporation, and steered the company back to profitability as president
and later as CEO. Iacocca was also one of the most charismatic and
influential men Detroit had ever known. After making massive but necessary
cuts to Chrysler's workforce, Iacocca elected to pay himself only
$1 for his first year as CEO, explaining that everyone had to make
sacrifices in order for Chrysler to survive. He also appeared in Chrysler's
commercials as himself, wrote a best-selling autobiography, and entertained
the possibility of running for president of the United States.
A self-made son of immigrants, America's
immigration and ethnic heritage was always important to Iacocca. Three
years before presiding over the record-breaking swearing-in ceremony,
Iacocca helped form the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation,
a non-profit organization founded in 1982 to raise funds for the restoration
and preservation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Iacocca
later became chairman emeritus of this organization.

^
1975 Juan Carlos becomes Spanish King
Two days after the death of General Francisco Franco, the dictator
of Spain since 1936, Juan Carlos is sworn in as the first ruling monarch
of Spain in more than forty years. Juan Carlos's grandfather was Alfonso
XIII, the last ruling monarch of Spain, who was forced into exile
after he refused to abdicate the throne after Spain was declared a
republic. Juan Carlos, born in Italy in 1938, returned to Spain in
1955 under the invitation of Franco, and studied in Madrid before
earning several commissions in the Spanish armed forces. In 1969,
Franco named him his successor. However, after assuming power, King
Juan Carlos I immediately begins dismantling Franco's system of dictatorial
government, and over the next decade presides over a period of extensive
democratization in Spain. — Juan Carlos I, hijo de Don
Juan de Borbón y Battemberg (Conde de Barcelona) y nieto de
Alfonso XIII, es proclamado Rey de España dos días después
de la muerte de Francisco Franco Bahamonde.

1972 The State Department ended a 22-year ban on US travel
to China. 1972 The United States loses its first
B-52 of the Vietnam War. The eight-engine bomber is brought down by a North
Vietnamese surface-to-air missile near Vinh on this day when B-52s fly their
heaviest raids of the war over North Vietnam. The Communists claim 19 B-52s
shot down to date.

^1972 Starts of design of Alto computer
Chuck Thacker, a computer scientist
at Xerox PARC, starts designing the Alto computer, designed to improve
the quality of machine-human interactions. The computer featured a
graphical user interface, a mouse, and the ability to network easily
with other computers. Despite its cutting-edge design, Xerox decided
not to market the Alto. Instead, Apple's cofounder Steve Jobs, who
saw a working version of Alto during a visit to Xerox PARC in December
1979, adopted many of Alto's ideas into the interfaces for the Apple
Lisa and the Apple Macintosh, released in 1984.

1967 Silver hits record $2.17 an ounce in New York

^1967 US commander in Vietnam claims a great victory General William Westmoreland,
commander of US Military Assistance Command Vietnam, briefs officials
at the Pentagon and says that the battle around Dak To was "the beginning
of a great defeat for the enemy." The battle for Dak To began on November
3 when 4500 US soldiers from the US 4th Division and the 173rd Airborne
Brigade engaged four Communist regiments of about 6000 soldiers in
the Central Highlands. The climax of the operation came in a savage
battle that began on 19 November on Hill 875, 12 miles southwest of
Dak To. The 173rd defeated the North Vietnamese, causing them to abandon
their last defensive line on the ridge of Hill 875. However, it was
a costly victory for the US, which suffered the loss of 135 men. In
the 19 days of the battle in and around Dak To, North Vietnamese fatalities
were estimated at 1455. Total US casualties included 285 killed, 985
wounded, and 18 missing. In his briefing at the Pentagon, Westmoreland
stressed the positive outcome of the battle. He revealed that a document
removed from the body of a dead North Vietnamese soldier on November
6 stated that the Dak To battle was to be the beginning of a winter/spring
offensive by the Communist B-3 Front. This document also revealed
that the main objective of the action at Dak To was the destruction
of a major American unit. The communists came close but ultimately
failed in this objective. The US troops, despite heavy losses, defeated
the North Vietnamese, mauling three enemy regiments so badly that
the they had to be withdrawn from South Vietnam to Cambodian and Laotian
sanctuaries for refitting. Westmoreland
was reportedly brought home from Vietnam by President Johnson to fulfill
a public relations task and revive flagging morale throughout the
country. His message on US military prospects in Vietnam was continually
optimistic, as he emphasized that progress was being made in the fight
against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. These public statements
came back to haunt him when the communists launch a massive offensive
during the Tet New Year holiday on 30 January 1968.

^1943 US — UK-China summit meeting decides Japan's
fate US President
Roosevelt, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-Shek of China gather in Cairo, Egypt, for a four-day discussion
focused primarily on the future of Japan. They agreed to strip Japan
of "all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied"
during the twentieth century, including Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria.
They also stipulated that, upon the conclusion of war, only an unconditional
surrender would be accepted from Japan.
During the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill also met with President
Ismet Inonti of Turkey to ask that nation to enter the war against
Germany. Despite the friendly façade of the conference, the
atmosphere was a bit chilly. American General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell
lobbied openly against Chiang Kai-Shek, and the Generalissimo bitterly
demanded concessions from Roosevelt in return. Meanwhile, Chiang's
Wellesley-educated wife went on lavish shopping sprees and dished
out acerbic comments at the meeting's numerous social gatherings.
Nonetheless, the upshot of the Cairo Conference—beyond Japan's
imminent doom if they lost the war—was the implication that
China would be conferred Great Power status in the postwar world.
At the beginning of a five-day
Allied conference in Cairo, Egypt, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet with General Chiang
Kai-shek of China to discuss strategy in the war against Japan. On
the military front, few specific strategic plans are made; however,
the leaders do agree to a declaration calling for a postwar expulsion
of Japan from all territories seized since 1914, including Korea.
Roosevelt and Churchill meet separately with Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin in Teheran, Iran, the day after the conclusion of the Cairo
summit.

2005 Maniappan Raman Kutty, truck driver from India,
murdered at 18:00 in Nimroz province, Afghanistan, by the Taliban, which
had abducted him together with 3 Afghans (2 co-workers and a guard) on 19
November 2005, demanding the withdrawal from Afghanistan of the Indian state-owned
company Border Road Organisation (BRO) for which they worked on the construction
of the Zaranj-Del Aram road, linking Afghanistan with Iran. — (051124)2004 Nancy Tidd, 61, and Emma Tidd, 40, shot in the head
with a shotgun by their grandson and nephew Christopher Sturm, 12, at 17:00
(23:00 UT) in Washington County, Ohio. Christopher is a juvenile delinquent
against whom charges are pending for sexual abuse. 2004 Margaret
Schlosser, 11 months, after both her arms are cut off at the shoulder
by her mother Dena Schlosser, 35, in Plano, Texas.2004 All
three persons aboard a Gulfstream G-1159A jet, whose wings clips
a light pole at 06:15 (12:15 UT) 2.5 km from landing in thick fog at Hobby
Airport, Houston, Texas. The three dead are the two men pilots and a stewardess.
The plane, belonging to Jet Place Inc., was coming from Dallas to take former
US president George Bush Sr. [12 Jun 1924~] to give a lecture at the Guayaquil,
Ecuador, Chamber of Commerce (Bush postpones it after learning of the accident).2004 David R. Mortensen, 42, his corpse is found in Boggy
Creek, in East Austin, Texas. 2004 Arthur Hopcraft,
71, author, journalist, and playwright. — (051122)2004
Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, after being shot as he left
his home in the morning, in Mosul, Iraq, he was a Sunni cleric, member of
the Association of Muslim Scholars. 2004 Denny
Drew, 55; deer hunter of the group at which unrelated dear hunter
Chai Vang, 26, shot the previous day, killing five on the spot and wounding
Drew and two others, near Meteor, Sawyer county, Wisconsin.2003
Dru Sjodin [26 Sep 1981–] [photo >], abducted
from the parking lot of the Columbia shopping mall in Grand Forks ND, and
stabbed by Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, when she resists his rape attempt.
He is a rapist who was released from a Minnesota prison in May 2003 after
serving 23 years for trying to abduct a woman off the street in 1979, and
stabbing her when she fought back. University of North Dakota student Sjodin,
22, of Pequot Lakes, Minn., is last heard talking to her boyfriend on a
cell phone at 17:10 after she left her job at a Victoria's Secret store;
her last words are "Oh, my God," and the phone goes dead. At 20:00 the boyfriend
receives a 1-minute silent call from her phone, whose signal would be determined
to have come from within 10 km of the phone tower near Fisher and have faded
out 24 hours later. Sjodin does not show up for her 21:00 shift at her second
job, waitress in a Grand Forks bar. — more
— Links to images
of her artwork.2003 At least 10 persons, including a suicide
car bomber, at a police station in Khan Bani Saad, on the northeastern
outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. The dead include six policemen, a 5-year-old
girl and two other civilians.2003 Seven policemen, two civilians,
and a suicide car bomber, outside the police headquarters in Baquba,
some 25 km northeast of Baghdad, Iraq.2003 A police colonel
in Mosul, Iraq, murdered.2002 Jamal Ali Ismail,
21, from Burij, and Mahmad al Masari, 19, from Beit Hanoun,
Islamic Jihad suicide bombers who, at 22:30, explode their fishing boat
as an Israeli Navy Dabur gunship approaches, warning them to leave a restricted
area off the northern coast of the Gaza Strip. Four Israeli crewmen are
wounded.2002 Iain John Hook, 50, in the Jenin refugee
camp, West Bank, where he headed a $27 million rebuilding project of the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA). Irishman Hooko a British
citizen, was getting out of his office in a small UN compound consisting
of several mobile homes. He was holding a mobile phone which an Israeli
soldier mistook for a hand grenade and shot Hook repeatedly,
hitting him in the abdomen, and he dies while the Israelis prevent an ambulance
from reaching him. Israeli troops had surrounded a nearby hideout of a wanted
Islamic Jihad leader, Abdullah Naji Wahash, 19, accused of involvement in
the October 2002 terror bombing at Karkur Junction, in which 14 Israelis
died, and in several other shooting and bombing attacks (Wahash ended up
arrested). The Israelis exchanged gunfire with Palestinian militants. Hundreds
of Palestinian youngsters threw stones at the Israeli soldiers, who then
fired at them and called in helicopter gunships. — The Reuters body
count of the al-Aqsa intifada reaches at least 1677 Palestinians and
662 Israelis.2002 Misleh Bilalo, 11, Palestinian
boy, in the Jenin refugee camp, West Bank, by Israeli bullet in his left
eye.2002 Israeli Sergeant Major Shigdaf Garmai,
30, from Lod, at 06:50, by an Iz a Din al-Kassam sniper who fires on the
patrol in which is Garmai, a tracker, in the northern part of the Gush Katif
bloc of enclave settlements near Tel Qateifa, West Bank. After an intensse
gunfight, the sniper escapes.2001 Some 50 persons, by landslide
in abandoned gold mine where they were among some 200 digging in
hope of finding remnants of gold, in Filadelfia, Caldas state, Colombia.2001 Five al-Astal cousins: Akram Na’im,
6, his brother Mohammed Na’im, 14; the two brothers Anies, 12, and
Omar Idris, 13; and Muhammad Sultan, 12, by an Israeli landmine,
on their way to school at about 07:30 in the Khan Younis refugee camp, Gaza
Strip. Working nearby, brothers Soliman Deeb al-Astal, 15, and Ahmad al-Astal,
22, are injured. Initially the Israeli army suggests that the explosion
may have been from a Palestinian terrorist bomb. Then it says that that
it has planted a bomb in a sandbagged position from which Palestinian militants
fired at Jewish settlements. At last, on 20 December 2001, after an investigation,
the Israeli military admits to professional mistakes and mistaken
decisions and says that Several officers will be reprimanded (if they
had been Palestinians who had done the same to Jewish children, they would
be targeted for assassination by the Israelis).2001 All 21
villagers on board overcrowded boat which capsizes in the Ghaghra
River at Rudauli, India.

^2000
Carlos Cardoso, 49, murdered, Mozambican journalist critical of government.
Carlos Cardoso, editor e proprietário
do jornal Metical, foi, por volta das 18:40 horas do dia
22 de Novembro de 2000, assassinado a tiro ao longo da Avenida Mártires
da Machava, nas proximidades do Parque dos Continuadores, cidade de
Maputo, por dois desconhecidos que em seguida se puseram em fuga.
It is an attack on freedom and
democracy. In the evening, Carlos Alberto Cardoso, 49, owner and editor
of the daily Metical, is being driven home from his office
when two cars force his to stop. Gunmen emerge from the cars and shoot
Cardoso and his driver. Cardoso, shot in the face, dies immediately.
His driver, Carlos Manjate, is hospitalized. The
next day the police says that it is investigating, but has no suspects.
"The government will not
waste time and will look for the gangsters who shot Carlos Cardoso,"
Prime Minister Pascoal
Manuel Mocumbi Mahykete [born 10 April 1941] would
say the next day. It may be suspected that his true meaning was: "The
government will not waste time looking for the gangsters who shot
Carlos Cardoso." The next day
Metical denoounces the killing as an attack against freedom
and democracy, and demands "quick and efficient justice." "The murderers
who killed him wanted to shut him up and indirectly all who have been
fighting in the press for freedom. They silenced an honest and brave
man, but they will not silence Metical. They will not silence
any other voices from a society that wants a decent country where
people can live in peace and prosperity."
Following the killing, Custodio Rafael, the journalist for Radio Mozambique
who first reported Cardoso's death, is beaten that same night, so
severely that he has to be hospitalized. Mozambique,
which gained independence from Portugal in 1975, is still recovering
from its 17-year civil war that ended in 1992. Many Mozambicans suspect
that the killing is linked to Cardoso's investigation into the disappearance
of $8.7 million from the Mozambique Commercial Bank. In his 25 years
as a reporter, Cardoso highlighted social problems and challenged
the government to fix them. From 1980 to 1989, Cardoso was the director
of AIM, the Mozambican news agency, and he used his position to criticize
the efforts of South Africa's apartheid government to destabilize
Mozambique. He later founded Mediafax, the country's first
independent newspaper and one distributed by fax. Cardoso left to
set up Metical, known for its strong economic reporting (metical
is the name of the Mozambiquan currency, US$1 being equal at the time
to about 10'000 meticais], in the late 1990s. In recent years, he
became a strong critic of international lending agencies and defended
the cashew processing industry that was crushed when the World Bank
forced Mozambique to liberalize the trade in raw cashews.

2000 Jamal Abdel Razek and three other Tanzim militia members,
machine gunned in their car from Israeli tanks at a roadblock close to the
Jewish settlement of Morag in the southern Gaza Strip. 254 persons, including
some 220 Palestinians, have died in the two months of the al-Aqsa intifadah..
1999 El número tres del principal grupo islámico
de Argelia, el FIS, asesinado tras recibir varios disparos. 1996 Garrett
Birkhoff, mathematician.1989 René Moawad,
newly elected Lebanese President, and 17 others, in bomb blast
in Syrian-patrolled Moslem West Beirut. 1982 Burton Turkus,
80, lawyer/author/TV host (Mr Arsenic)1963
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 46, 35th US President, shot dead
in Dallas, Texas ( by Lee Harvey Oswald ??). 10 months later would be issued
the Warren Report, giving the official account of what happened. —
MORE1963 J. D. Tippit, Dallas Police patrolman, shot
by Lee Harvey Oswald whom Tippit was attempting to arrest, at approximately
13:15 (45 minutes after the Kennedy assassination) Oswald flees to a movie
theater where he is arrested at about 13:55. At 19:10 he is charged with
the Tippit murder. At about 01:35 the next day, he would be charged with
the Kennedy murder. 1963 C.S.Lewis, 65, Anglican
scholar, novelist and Christian apologist. Well known for his children's
classic, The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56), Lewis also wrote other
Christian classics, including The Screwtape Letters (1943), The
Great Divorce (1946), and. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 1963 Aldous Leonard Huxley English novelist. ("Brave New
World" )

1944 Arthur
S. Eddington, 62, mathematician and physicist, who in a Tarner
lecture in 1938 said: "I believe there are 15'747'724'136'275'002'577'605'653'961'181'555'468'044'717'914'527'116'709'366'231'425'076'185'631'031'296
protons in the universe and the same number of electrons." [the number
is equal to 136 x 2^256] [however, I insist that a manual recount is necessary
and that, including the absentee particles, it might well show that there
are exactly 15'747'724'136'275'002'577'605'653'961'181'555'468'044'717'914'527'116'709'366'231'425'076'185'631'031'692
protons and 15'747'724'136'275'002'577'605'653'961'181'555'468'044'717'914'527'116'709'366'231'425'076'185'631'031'926
electrons.]

1916 Jack
London, one of the best novelists to chronicle
the last wild western frontier of Alaska, from kidney failure in Glen
Ellen, California. Born John
Griffith Chaney in San Francisco in 1876, he was the child of an unmarried
mother who had come from a once wealthy family that had fallen on
hard times. It is believed that his father was William Chaney, an
itinerant journalist and lawyer whose main claim to fame was his role
in popularizing the American study of astrology. However, Jack took
the name of John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran his
mother married in 1876, the year Jack was born. Growing up in poverty,
London nonetheless had a colorful adolescence filled with adventure
and excitement. Before he reached the age of 19, London sailed the
Pacific on a whaling boat, hoboed around the countryside, and joined
Kelly's Army of unemployed protestors against American economic inequality.
When he was 19, he crammed a four-year high school course into one
year of intensive studies and enrolled at the University of California
at Berkeley. He quit college after only one year to join the Klondike
gold rush, but remained a voracious reader and student throughout
his life. Although his lasting
claim to fame came from his stories of the Alaskan gold frontier,
London only spent a brief time in the Klondike in the winter of 1897
searching for his fortune. Like most gold seekers, London's prospecting
efforts failed. However, he returned to California with a trove of
stories and tall tales that eventually proved even more valuable.
London published his first stories of the Alaskan frontier in 1899,
and he eventually produced over 50 volumes of short stories, novels,
and political essays. His 1903 novel about a domestic dog who joins
an Alaskan wolf pack, The Call of the Wild, brought him lasting
fame and reflected his beliefs in Social Darwinism. Interestingly,
despite his identification with rugged individualism and fierce competition,
London was a committed socialist and supporter of the US labor movement.
Although his writing was lucrative, London spent piles of money on
an enormous house and ranching operation in California; to pay for
these, he wrote throughout his life. Plagued by illnesses from an
early age, London developed a kidney disease of unknown origin and
died only 40 years old. Recent scholarship has discredited claims
made by earlier biographers that London was an alcoholic womanizer
who took his own life. Jack London,
was born in San Francisco on 12 January 1876. His father, an astrologer
named Chaney, abandoned the family, and his unwed mother, a spiritualist
and music teacher, married a Mr. London, whose last name. Jack assumed.
From the age of 14, London dropped out of school and struggled to
make a living, working in a cannery and as a sailor, oyster pirate,
and fish patroller. During the
national economic crisis of 1893, he joined a march of unemployed
workers. He was jailed for vagrancy for a month, during which time
he decided to go to college. The 17-year-old London completed a high
school equivalency course and enrolled at the University of California
at Berkeley, where he read voraciously for a year. However, he dropped
out to join the 1897 gold rush.
While in the Klondike, London began submitting stories to magazines.
In 1900, his first collection of stories, The
Son of the Wolf, was published. Three years later, his story
The Call of the Wild made him famous around the country.
London continued to write stories of adventure amid the harsh natural
elements. He sailed a ketch to the South Pacific, telling of his adventures
in The
Cruise of the Snark (1911). During his 17-year career, he
wrote 50 fiction and nonfiction books. He settled in northern California
about 1911, having already written most of his best work. The
optimism and energy with which he attacked his task are best conveyed
in his autobiographical novel Martin
Eden (1909), perhaps his most enduring work. He wrote two
other autobiographical novels of considerable interest: The
Road (1907) and John
Barleycorn (1913). Although
Jack London became the highest-paid writer in the United States, his
earnings never matched his expenditures, so that his hastily written
output is of uneven quality. His Alaskan stories The
Call of the Wild (1903), White
Fang (1906), and Burning
Daylight (1910), in which he dramatized in turn atavism,
adaptability, and the appeal of the wilderness, are outstanding. Other
important works are The
Sea-Wolf (1904), which features a Nietzschean superman hero,
and The
Iron Heel (1907), a fantasy of the future that is a terrifying
anticipation of fascism.

JACK LONDON ONLINE:

The Acorn-Planter (1916) A play about the Nishinam
tribe and their encounter with explorers.

White Fang
— Summary Two
men are out in the wild of the north. Their dogs disappear as they
are lured by a she-wolf and eaten by the pack. They only have three
bullets left and Bill, one of the men, uses them to try to save one
of their dogs; he misses and is eaten with the dog. Only Henry and
two dogs are left; he makes a fire, trying to drive away the wolves.
They draw in close and he is almost eaten, saved only by a company
of men who were traveling nearby.
The wolves are in the midst of a famine. They continue on, lead by
several wolves alongside the she-wolf, and when they finally find
food the pack starts to split up. The she-wolf mates with one of the
wolves and has a litter of pups. Only one survives after several more
famines, and he grows strong and is a feisty pup.
They come to an Indian village where the she-wolf's (who is actually
half-wolf, half-dog) master is. He catches her again and White Fang,
her pup, stays nearby. Soon, she is sold to another Indian, while
White Fang stays with Gray Beaver, her master. The other dogs of the
village terrorize White Fang, especially one named Lip-lip.
White Fang becomes more and more vicious,
encouraged by his master. He kills other dogs. Gray Beaver goes to
Fort Yukon to trade and discovers whiskey. White Fang is passed into
the hands of Beauty Smith, a monster of a man. He fights other dogs
until he meets his match in a bulldog and is saved only by a man named
Scott. Scott tames White Fang
and takes him back to California with him. There White Fang learns
to love his master and his master's family and even saves Scott's
father from a criminal that escaped from the nearby prison. White
Fang has puppies with Collie, one of the master's dogs, and lives
a happy life.

1911 Valentin Alexandrovitch Serov, Russian painter specialized
in portraits, born on 07 January 1865. — MORE
ON SEROV AT ART 4 NOVEMBER
with links to images. 1907 Paula Modersohn-Becker,
German artist born on 08 February 1876. — more
with links to images.1896 George Washington Gale Ferris
inventor (Ferris wheel)1890 Frank Buchser, Swiss
artist born on 15 August 1828. The first of the following links, which has
nothing to do with Buchser, is to a question to which it is the answer.
— Relate it to the Kalevala.
— more with links
to images.1843 Pieter Frans de Noter, Belgian artist
born on 23 February 1779.1822 Peter Paul Joseph Noël,
Belgian artist born on 11 April 1789.1784 Frisi,
mathematician.1781 Jan Ekels I, Dutch artist born
on 21 November 1724. 1726 Antonio-Domenico Gabbiani,
Italian artist born on 13 February 1652. — more
with links to images.

^1718 Edward Teach or Thatch "Blackbeard the Pirate",
on North Carolina's Outer Banks during a bloody battle with a British
Royal Navy force sent from Virginia.
Believed to be a native of England, Edward Teach likely began his
pirating career in 1713, when he became a crewman aboard a Caribbean
sloop commanded by pirate Benjamin Hornigold. In 1717, after Hornigold
accepted an offer of general amnesty by the British Crown and retired
as a pirate, Teach took over a captured twenty-six-gun French guineyman,
increased its armament, and renamed it the Queen Anne's Revenge. Over
the next six months, the Queen Anne's Revenge served as the flagship
of a pirate fleet featuring up to four vessels and more than two hundred
men. During this time, Teach became the most infamous pirate of his
day, winning the popular name of Blackbeard for his long, dark beard
that he was rumored to light on fire during battles. Blackbeard's
pirate forces terrorized the Caribbean and the southern coast of North
America and became notorious for their cruelty. In May of 1718, the
Queen Anne's Revenge and another vessel were shipwrecked, and Blackbeard
deserted a third ship and most of his men because of a lack of supplies.
With the single remaining ship, Blackbeard sailed to Bath, the capital
of North Carolina, to meet with Governor Charles Eden, who agreed
to pardon the pirate in exchange for a share of his sizable booty.
However, in November of the same year, Governor Alexander Spottswood
of Virginia, whose colony suffered significant losses from Blackbeard's
piracy, sent a British Royal Navy fleet to North Carolina where Blackbeard
was killed in a bloody battle at Oracoke Inlet. Legend has it that
Blackbeard, who captured over thirty ships in his brief pirating career,
received five musketball wounds and twenty sword lacerations before
dying.

^1988 Stealth Bomber unveiled
In the presence of members of Congress
and the media, the B-2 "stealth" bomber is shown publicly for the
first time at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The aircraft,
which was developed in great secrecy for nearly a decade, was designed
with "stealth" characteristics that would allow it to penetrate an
enemy's most sophisticated defenses unnoticed. The B-2, which at the
time of its public unveiling had not even been flown on a test flight,
rapidly comes under fire for its massive cost — over forty billion
dollars for development and a billion-dollar price tag for each unit.
However, during the next year, the B-2 is successfully flown, and
it performs favorably. Although the plane has a wingspan of nearly
half a football field, its radar signal is as negligible as that of
a bird, and the aircraft also successfully evades infrared, sound
detectors, and the visible eye. In 1992, following the fall of the
Soviet Union, the original order for the production of 132 stealth
bombers is reduced to twenty-one aircraft. Although each B-2 costs
$1.3 billion to produce, and the delicate parts of the bomber cost
millions of dollars to maintain, the B-2 has won a prominent place
in the modern US Air Force fleet, and served well in US bombing missions
during the 1990s.

^ 1927 The snowmobile is patented by
Carl Eliason of Sayner, Wisconsin
Eliason had actually completed his first working prototype three years
before — a small vehicle with a front-mounted liquid-cooled
2.5 HP Johnson outboard engine, slide rail track guides, wooden cleats,
rope-controlled steering skis, and running boards made out of two
downhill skis. Eliason built his first snowmobile in a small garage
behind his general store over a two-year period, and used everything
from bicycle parks to a radiator from a used Model T Ford. During
the 1930s, Eliason founded Eliason Motor Toboggan, continued improving
on his snowmobiles, and the company was soon known around the world.
A major purchaser of Eliason snowmobiles in the early years of the
company was the US Army, which ordered 150 all-white Eliason Motor
Toboggans for use in the defense of Alaska during World War II

^ 1869 André-Paul-Guillaume
Gide, French writer, humanist, and moralist who received
the 1947
Nobel Prize for Literature, and died on 19 February 1951.
Gide was the only child of Paul Gide
and his wife, Juliette Rondeaux. His father was of southern Huguenot
peasant stock; his mother, a Norman heiress, although Protestant by
upbringing, belonged to a northern Roman Catholic family long established
at Rouen. When Gide was eight he was sent to the École Alsacienne
in Paris, but his education was much interrupted by neurotic bouts
of ill health. After his father's early death in 1880, his well-beingbecame
the chief concern of his devoutly austere mother; often kept at home,
he was taught by indifferent tutors and by his mother's governess.
While in Rouen Gide formed a deep attachment for his cousin, Madeleine
Rondeaux. Gide returned to the
École Alsacienne to prepare for his baccalauréat examination,
and after passing it in 1889, he decided to spend his life in writing,
music, and travel. His first work was an autobiographical study of
youthful unrest entitled Les Cahiers d'André Walter
(1891). Written, like most of his later works, in the first person,
it uses the confessional form in which Gide was to achieve his greatest
successes. In 1891 a school friend,
the writer Pierre Louÿs [10 Dec 1870 – 04 Jun 1925], introduced
Gide into the famous “Tuesday evenings” of poet Stéphane
Mallarmé [18 Mar 1842 – 09 Sep 1898], which were the
center of the French Symbolist movement, and for a time Gide was influenced
by Symbolist aesthetic theories. His works “Narcissus”
(1891), Le Voyage d'Urien (1893), and “The Lovers'
Attempt” (1893) belong to this period.
In 1893 Gide paid his first visit to North Africa, hoping to find
release there from his dissatisfaction with the restrictions imposed
by his puritanically strict Protestant upbringing. Gide's contact
with the Arab world and its radically different moral standards helped
to liberate him from the Victorian social and sexual conventions he
felt stifled by. One result of this nascent intellectual revolt against
social hypocrisy was his growing awareness of his ownhomosexual inclinations.
The lyrical prose poem Les Nourritures terrestres (1897)
reflects Gide's personal liberation from the fear of sin and his acceptance
of the need to follow his own impulses, however unconventional they
may be. But after he returned to France, Gide's relief at having shed
the shackles of convention evaporated in what he called the “stifling
atmosphere” of the Paris salons. He satirized his surroundings
in Marshlands (1894), a brilliant parable of animals who,
living always in dark caves, lose their sight because they never use
it. In 1894 Gide returned to North
Africa, where he met Oscar Wilde [16 Oct 1854 – 30
Nov 1900] and Lord Alfred Douglas, who encouraged him to admit
the nature of his suppressed homosexuality. He was recalled to France
because of his mother's illness, however, and she died in May 1895.
In October 1895 Gide married his cousin
Madeleine, who had earlier refused him. Early in 1896 he was elected
mayor of the commune of La Roque, at 27 the youngest mayor in France.
He took his duties seriously but managed to complete Les Nourritures
terrestres . It was published in 1897 and fell completely flat,
although after World War I it was to become Gide's most popular and
influential work. In the postwar generation, its call to each individual
to express fully whatever is in him evoked an immediate response.Le Prométhée mal enchaîné
(1899), a return to the satirical style of Le Voyage d'Urien
and Marshland, is Gide's last discussion of man's search for individual
values.His next tales mark the beginning of his great creative period.
L'Immoraliste (1902), La Porte étroite (1909),
and La Symphonie pastorale (1919) reflect Gide's attempts
to achieve harmony in his marriage in their treatment of the problems
of human relationships. They mark an important stage in his development:
adapting his works' treatment and style to his concern with psychological
problems. L'Immoraliste and La Porte étroite
are in the prose form which Gide termed a récit; i.e., a studiedly
simple but deeply ironic tale in which a first-person narrator reveals
the inherent moral ambiguities of life by means of his seemingly innocuous
reminiscences. In these works Gide achieves a mastery of classical
construction and a pure, simple style.
During most of this period Gide was suffering deep anxiety and distress.
Although his love for Madeleine had given his life what he called
its “mystic orientation,” he found himself unable, in
a close, permanent relationship, to reconcile this love with his need
for freedom and for experience of every kind. Les Caves du Vatican
(1914) marks the transition to the second phase of Gide's great creative
period. He called it not a tale but a sotie, by which he meant a satirical
work whose foolish or mad characters are treated farcically within
an unconventional narrative structure. This was the first of his works
to be violently attacked for anticlericalism.
In the early 1900s Gide had already begun to be widely known as a
literary critic, and in 1908 he was foremost among those who founded
La Nouvelle Revue Française, the literary review that
was to unite progressive French writers until World War II. During
World War I Gide worked in Paris, first for the Red Cross, then in
a soldiers' convalescent home, and finally in providing shelter to
war refugees. In 1916 he returned to Cuverville, his home since his
marriage, and began to write again.
The war had intensified Gide's anguish, and early in 1916 he had begun
to keep a second Journal (published in 1926 as Numquid et tu?)
in which he recorded his search for God. Finally, however, unable
to resolve the dilemma (expressed in his statement “Le catholicisme
est inadmissible. Le protestantisme est intolérable. Et je
me sens profondément chrétien.”), he resolved
to achieve his own ethic, and by casting off his sense of guilt to
become his true self. Now, in a desire to liquidate the past, he began
his autobiography, Si le grain ne meurt (1926), an account
of his life from birth to marriage that is among the great works of
confessional literature. In 1918 his friendship for the young future
movie director Marc Allégret [22 Dec 1900 – 04 Nov 1973]
caused a serious crisis in his marriage, when his wife in jealous
despair destroyed her “dearest possession on earth”, his
letters to her. After the war a
great change took place in Gide, and his face began to assume the
serene expression of his later years. By the decision involved in
beginning his autobiography and the completion in 1918 of Corydon
(a Socratic dialogue in defense of homosexuality begun earlier), he
had achieved at last an inner reconciliation. Corydon's publication
in 1924 was disastrous, though, and Gide was violently attacked, even
by his closest friends. Gide called
his next work, Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1926), his only novel.
He meant by this that in conception, range, and scope it was on a
vaster scale than his tales or his soties. It is the most complex
and intricately constructed of his works, dealing as it does with
the relatives and teachers of a group of schoolboys subject to corrupting
influences both in and out of the classroom (“Olivier”
is Marc Allégret). Les Faux-Monnayeurs treats all
of Gide's favorite themes in a progression of discontinuous scenes
and happenings that come close to approximating the texture of daily
life itself. In 1925 Gide set off
for French Equatorial Africa with Marc Allégret (who brought
back his first movie). When he returned he published Voyage au
Congo (1927), in which he criticized French colonial policies.
The compassionate, objective concern for humanity that marks the final
phase of Gide's life found expression in political activities at this
time. He became the champion of society's victims and outcasts, demanding
more humane conditions for criminals and equality for women. For a
time it seemed to him that he had found a faith in Communism. In 1936
he set out on a visit to the Soviet Union, but later expressed his
disillusionment with the Soviet system in Retour de l'U.R.S.S.
(1936) and Retouches à mon retour de l'U.R.S.S. (1937).
In 1938 Gide's wife, Madeleine, died.
After a long estrangement they had been brought together by her final
illness. To him she was always the great, perhaps the only, love of
his life. With the outbreak of World War II, Gide began to realize
the value of tradition and to appreciate the past. In a series of
imaginary interviews written in 1941 and 1942 for Le Figaro,
he expressed a new concept of liberty, declaring that absolute freedom
destroys both the individual and society: freedom must be linked with
the discipline of tradition. From 1942 until the end of the war Gide
lived in North Africa. There he wrote “Theseus,” whose
story symbolizes Gide's realization of the value of the past: Theseus
returns to Ariadne only because he has clung to the thread of tradition.
In June 1947 Gide received the first
honor of his life: the Doctor of Letters of the University of Oxford.
It was followed by the 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1950 he
published the last volume of his Journal, which took the record of
his life up to his 80th birthday. All Gide's writings illuminate some
aspect of his complex character. He is seen at his most characteristic,
however, in the Journal he kept from 1889, a unique work of more than
a millionwords in which he records his experiences, impressions, interests,
and moral crises during a period of more than 60 years. After its
publication he resolved to write no more.
Gide's lifelong emphasis on the self-aware and sincere individual
as the touchstone of both collective and individual morality was complemented
by the tolerant and enlightened views he expressed on literary, social,
and political questions throughout his career. For most of his life
a controversial figure, Gide was long regarded as a revolutionary
for his open support of the claims of the individual's freedom of
action in defiance of conventional morality. Before his death he was
widely recognized as an important humanist and moralist in the great
17th-century French tradition. The integrity and nobility of his thought
and the purity and harmony of style that characterize his stories,
verse, and autobiographical works have ensured his place among the
masters of French literature.

1868 John Nance Garner, (D) 32nd Vice-President of the
US (1933-1941) who died on 07 November 1967.1864 Wilhelm
List, Austrian artist who died on 09 February 1918. 1860
Cecilio Pla y Gallardo, pintor español.
1857 George Gissing, English novelist who died on 28 December 1903. 1856 Heber J. Grant Salt Lake City, 7th President of Mormon
church.1841 Manuel Aguirre, escultor español.
1840 Lemoine,
mathematician.

^1819 Mary Ann Evans “George Eliot”,
in Warwickshire, England. “Eliot”
attended several schools until her mother's death in 1841, after which
she moved to Coventry with her father. In Coventry, Eliot grew close
with her neighbors, the radical intellectual Bray family. With their
encouragement, Eliot began writing translations and reviews. After
her father's death in 1849, she moved to London to become a freelance
writer. There, she boarded with the family of John Chapman, who had
published some of her work. In 1842 Chapman purchased The Westminster
Review, which Eliot edited for three years. About this time,
Eliot became involved with married journalist and writer George Henry
Lewes [18 Apr 1817 – 28 Nov 1878]
whose wife repeatedly commited adultery which Lewes condoned at first;
for this reason Lewes was unable to obtain a divorce; so Lewes and
Eliot lived together in adultery, and never married. Her polite Victorian
acquaintances refused to call on her.
Fearful that her unconventional relationship would provoke unfair
criticism of her work, she began publishing fiction under the pseudonym
George Eliot. Her earliest published fiction, several rural sketches,
were published as a book, Scenes
of Clerical Life (1858). Her first full-length novel, Adam
Bede, was published in 1859. It was well received, as were
most of her other six other novels, including The
Mill on the Floss (1869) and Silas
Marner (1861). Middlemarch,
published in eight parts from 1871 to 1872, was Eliot's masterpiece.
The novel presented a sweeping survey of all social classes in a rural
town, drawing psychological insights that set the stage for the modern
novel. After Lewes' death in 1878, Eliot married John Walter Cross
[1840-1924] on 06 May 1880. She died on 22 December 1880.

1803 Bellavitis,
mathematician.1803 José María de Heredia,
poeta cubano. 1788 Albertus-Jonas Brandt, Dutch
artist who died on 1821.1787 Anthony-Vandyke Dopley Fielding,
British artist who died on 03 March 1855. — more
with links to images.1766 Camilo Torres y Tenorio,
político y abogado colombiano. 1648 Antoine Pierre
Patel II, French artist who died on 15 March 1707. 1643
René Robert de la Salle, French explorer of North America

Thoughts for the day:Of all the ills that men endure, hope is the only cheap
and universal cure.”
In all the ills that have cheap cures, hope is the only one that endures.”
"Of all the ills that men suffer, none is worse than Hell's sulphur."
"Of all the ills that men endure, none is worse than those which women endure.
Make things as simple as possible, but not more.
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who
are rich. — J.F.Kennedy, one of the few rich.
“If a society cannot free men of all the ills that they endure, it ought
at least to give them hope.
If a society cannot free the many, it can still enrich the few.”
If a society cannot enrich the many who are poor, it still can impoverish
the few who are rich.
The many who are poor cannot, without help, save society from the few who
are rich.
A rich society's GNP means gross national provocation to the poor."If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we
are weak, words will be no help." — Words which were of no help
to JFK, in the draft of his planned 22 Nov 1963 speech in Dallas.